Wish I Could Rewind
by DARWIN51
Summary: Lassiter's secret gets out, and he doesn't think he can live with anyone knowing. The things he does next are horrible, even fatal..


"No don't go yet! Jules, c'mon" Shawn Spencer tugged his girlfriend's arm in an attempt to get her back into bed with him. Juliet laughed. "Shawn, I have to go to work! Lassiter and I are heading down to LA today for an important council meeting about the recent changes to city and state regulations."

"Sounds important."

"It _is._ Now will you please let me go?"

Shawn released her arm and watched her dress. "I'll see you tonight? Dinner at-"

"Fridays. Got it." Juliet replied. She rushed out the door.

"Drive carefully!" Shawn called after her. It was something his dad had always said when Shawn was growing up. It had become habitual.

~/~

Juliet watched the ground glide past beneath her feet as she made her way up to the police station where she was meeting Lassiter. She kicked at a piece of loose gravel, causing it to skitter away in an unpredictable path, veering this way and that before settling at the curb. Twelve concrete steps later and she was through the doors. She passed Buzz McNabb, who was holding a coffee mug, stirring it with a spoon. Wait, not a spoon. A…_sharpie?_

"Buzz, _tell_ me you know you're holding a sharpie and not a spoon?" Clearly, she had underestimated the knowledge of the officer with the sharpie, beaming with intelligence. _Yeah right._

"Oh I know, detective. I'm reviving this sharpie!" Buzz replied, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

"Reviving…the sharpie?"

"Yes, I left it open all night by accident, so now I'm reviving it in warm water."

"How do you know that will work?"

"Google told me!"

"Right. Okay. Good luck Buzz, I'll catch you later." Juliet began to walk away.

"Good luck at your conference!" he called back.

"O'Hara, there you are. Are you ready to go?" Lassiter approached her with his work bag slung across his shoulder.

"Ready. Let's hit the road."

~/~

"By the way, Carlton, happy one year anniversary!" Juliet said.

"Of what?"

"Of being with Marlowe."

"Oh. We broke up."

"Are you serious?" Juliet asked, confused. "Why? You guys were so perfect together."

Lassiter frowned.

"Oh! I'm sorry, did she break up with you? I didn't mean-"

"No, it was mutual." Lassiter replied, trying to drop the subject.

"Any reason?" Juliet was persistent.

"Listen, O'Hara. We just weren't right for each other." Lassiter gripped the steering wheel and focused on the road.

"I don't mean to get in your business, Carlton, but this is disappointing to me. I finally saw you happy, why did it end?"

"Because! Just because!" He hissed and sped up.

"Was there something wrong with her?" Juliet clearly just did not know what was good for her. She was really getting on his nerves now.

"She was a woman!" Lassiter shouted.

"…what…wait. What? You mean…"

"NO! No, I didn't mean anything!"

"Carlton… are you…it's okay."

"No it's not! I didn't mean for you to know that! No one's supposed to know that I'm gay! And no one will!" He pushed the car up to 80.

"Carlton, please. I really don't care who you like, it's okay, I promise! My brother's gay, I promise, I don't care!"

"It's not okay. Everyone who's ever found out has always been disgusted. I'm done with this."

Lassiter sped up to 90.

"Please, slow down! You're gonna get us killed!" Juliet cried.

"Nope, just me."

"Are you saying you'd rather _die_ than have me know you're gay?" Juliet asked. The needle on the speedometer was reaching for 100.

A tiny speck on the open expanse of road in front of them appeared and grew larger and larger by the second. As they came up on the other car, Lassiter laughed, but slowed a little.

Another object appeared on the road. A fallen tree blocked half of the road, and just as the other car swerved to avoid it, Lassiter lost control of the wheel and the second car suddenly lay right in front of them.

Juliet screamed.

_CRASH_.

~/~

Lassiter squinted at the bright lights in his face. _Too, too bright._ His vision was fuzzy, but he smelled smoke, burning rubber, freshly sheared copper, and something that smelled a little like bacon, but gross, over-burned bacon. Then he began to hear. The scream was far away, like a distant ambulance, then it got closer and closer until it was right next to him. It was Juliet's scream, he recognized. Too bright, too bright, headlights of the other car, again with the burned rubber, it hurt to breathe. He tried to turn away from the light but he found he couldn't move his neck. _Too bright, too bright._ The light washed away the limited vision he had, and he fell back into the blackness.

~/~

Lassiter floated around in some type of wet, sticky darkness, like a room covered in cold tar. A room that stretched on forever and yet made him claustrophobic at the same time. His entire face was made up of steel wool. He heard distant voices talking to him; "Carlton, did you do your homework?" A faintly familiar voice echoed through the blackness, accompanied by the sound of dripping water. "C-C-C-C-CARLton." The voice got louder then quieter all of a sudden, sounding like it had come at him, crashed into him, then left behind him.

_CRASH._

He realized he had no body. He was a body-less head, floating, made out of fuzzy, itchy steel wool. Ten thousand pounds then thousand pounds. That's what it felt like was on his chest, ten thousand pounds. He tried to run. Twenty million Lassiters running, running away from something, something but he didn't know what. It was big, and it was dark, it frightened him like nothing ever had before. But it wasn't actually there. It wasn't real. There was nothing. He spun around. Nothing, and more nothing. All the thoughts in his head got overbearingly repetitive. _Did I? Did I do my homework? Why, why why can't you be like the rest of them? Play on the playground like everyone else. Just like everyone else, Go. Go away. Go. Go to hell, stupid faggot. NO! I won't listen to them! Did I do my homework?_

Too bright, too bright. The darkness was too bright, he couldn't stand it anymore. Too bright too bright too dark too much too bright.

The bright darkness swallowed him once again.

~/~

More light in his face. He squinted, even though his eyes were shut.

"He's coming to."

"He's a lucky man"

Lassiter opened his eyes, if anything to try to turn off the light, but instead he saw two nurses hovering above him. They seemed to be floating, just more heads without bodies. The rest of them slowly came into focus.

_CRASH_.

He heard the noise in his head, and just like that he remembered everything.

"Wh- whmsmf?" He asked, panicked.

"Honey, don't try to talk, you have a tube down your throat."

Lassiter panicked more, then calmed down again.

"You have a collapsed lung, so watch yourself, be careful. Blink twice for yes and once for no. Do you remember what happened?"

Lassiter blinked twice. He kept struggling to say something so the nurse finally handed him a whiteboard. He looked down at his hands and forearms which had small cuts and scrapes all over them.

_Where's my partner?_ He wrote.

The nurses turned and talked in hushed voices to each other as if he couldn't hear. "Who's his partner?" "I don't know."

They turned back to him. "Is she the person who was in the car with you?"

Two blinks.

"Honey, I have no idea. She wasn't taken to this hospital."

Lassiter wasn't sure if this was good news or bad news.

A new nurse came in to take over, and the three of them spoke quietly, filling the new guy in.

Lassiter could make out some of the words. "…collapsed lung…broken ribs…lucky…other…died."

"Mmmh! MMMHhhh!" hearing this, Lassiter began to cry out.

_No! She can't be dead! _

"Oh honey, hang on, let me get this tube out of you." The nurse pulled the tube out of his throat, giving him a weird sensation. "Who died?" His voice was raspy.

"The people in the other car. A man, a woman, and a 3 month old, bless their souls. Poor thing."

_I'm a murderer? I'm a murderer. Wait, I've killed people before. Not innocent people though. Not a three-month-old._

Lassiter felt the overpowering urge to throw up, so he did.

The nurse got him cleaned up, and she said he had visitors. Peeking around the corner, Lassiter saw Shawn and Gus enter the room. Shawn's face was red from crying, and Gus kept looking at his feet. Shawn stormed right up to Lassiter and punched him. Right in the jaw. Ouch.

"I probably deserved that." Lassiter whispered. A strong looking male nurse rushed in and held Shawn back, but there was no need, because Shawn was done.

"Do you have any idea? DO you!" Shawn's voice was desperate, he sobbed between words. He looked as if he could barely stand.

"What?" Lassiter asked. "what, what!"

"You killed her!" Shawn screamed.

_CRASH._


End file.
